Negan and Maggie Must Work Together in New Look at The Walking Dead’s Final Season Premiere

Enemies Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) are sharing the same space in a new behind-the-scenes look at the Final Season of The Walking Dead. After Carol (Melissa McBride) commuted his life imprisonment to assassinate Alpha (Samantha Morton) and silence the Whisperers earlier in Season 10, Negan crashed Maggie’s homecoming when she was surprised to see him out of prison — and alive — in “Home Sweet Home.” On the run from the human-hunting Reapers and with nowhere to go after the Whisperers burned down their home at the Hilltop colony, Maggie returned to Alexandria, where she’ll raise her son Hershel (Kien Michael Spiller) next to their new neighbor: Negan.

A new behind-the-scenes look at the in-production Season 11 reveals a grimy glimpse at the season premiere, where Maggie and Negan — accompanied by Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Dog — make their way underground. The Walking Dead previously revealed this slimy setting in a first-look photo from the Final Season premiere airing August 22.

There will be plenty of friction between the bow-slinging widow and her husband’s killer come Season 11, but executive producer and Walking Dead Universe chief content officer Scott Gimple says Maggie’s story won’t be defined by her vendetta against Negan in these final 24 episodes.

“It certainly isn’t just about that [Maggie vs Negan]. She isn’t defined by that,” Gimple said recently on Twitch’s TWDUniverse. “It is some pretty crucial business, obviously the end of the episode [‘Here’s Negan’] seems to tell us that it’s nothing to sneeze at.”

“She was out there doing pretty incredible things,” Gimple added about Maggie’s more than six years away on the road. “She went from someone who was listening to her dad obviously and wasn’t sure walkers were sick or whether they were dead, to someone who very quickly became the leader of a community and stabilized them and led them through some very difficult stuff. She wore that in a way that seemed like she was born for it. That’s a huge part of her story. Even motherhood, I wouldn’t say would define her.”

It’s her role as a post-apocalyptic leader that’s at the heart of Maggie’s story this season, said Gimple, with the ex-villain acting as an “unbelievable complication to that” after burning away his past in the revealing origin story “Here’s Negan.”

Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter for all things TWD. The Final Season of The Walking Dead premieres Sunday, August 22, on AMC.